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Entrepreneurship and mentoring

The Duke of York launched an accelerated version of his Pitch@Palace initiative at Cambridge Judge Business School.

HRH The Duke of York, KG launched a new accelerated version of his Pitch@Palace initiative for entrepreneurship at Cambridge Judge Business School, which focused on speed mentoring and speed pitching.

The Duke of York is patron of the Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge, which hosted the 11 July event at the School. He urged young ventures to get involved in as many networking programmes as they can.

“The more you take part in, the more opportunity you have to talk to people, the more opportunity you have to interact with people, the more opportunity there is for somebody to say to you: ‘I’ve got an idea that you might like to listen to’ or ‘I’ve got someone you need to see because I can get you into a supply chain,’” the Duke of York said in his introductory remarks.
He also emphasised how “serendipity” through chance meetings can help new ventures develop contacts and markets.

The Pitch@Palace event at Cambridge Judge included tips on effective pitching of ventures in short time frames, offering feedback to entrepreneurs who presented a one-minute pitch of their ideas.

It also featured a panel of alumni of previous Pitch@Palace events hosted at St. James’s Palace, who said the connections gained through Pitch@Palace have proved very important in gaining investment and other traction for their ventures.

The panel included Tim Guilliams of Healx, which repurposes drugs to fight rare diseases; Raoul-Gabriel Urma of Cambridge Coding Academy, a computer coding community venture; Hannah Harvey of health app firm Ask the Midwife; and Rebekah Scheuerle of JustMilk, which delivers nutrients and medicine to breastfeeding babies through a silicon device. JustMilk won top prize in the first biotech-themed Pitch@Palace, run in partnership with Entrepreneurship Centre at Cambridge Judge Business School, in March 2016.

The Pitch@Palace event at Cambridge Judge Business School concluded with remarks about entrepreneurship by Lord Karan Bilimoria, founder of Cobra beer and chairman of the Advisory Board of the School.